just installed OPNsense on Virtualbox and while it works OK, my networks speeds have been reduced substantially with this setup.
So, I'm looking for low-cost hardware recommendations that will allow me to plug the hardware directly into the modem and serve DHCP to my LAN.
I would appreciate any recommendations!
look up Qotom/Protectli and similar systems.
What is your planned network load? Is this a Soho setup with NAT\DHCP\DNS only or any other heavy services?
Virtualbox is for sure slow - this is virtualizaion on top of OS, to become fast you need some native "bare metal" hypervisor like Proxmox or KVM on top of some Linux system. You can run some other VMs then.